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What’s the best way to spend $500?

It’s a question LaSalle Street Church can’t yet answer, two weeks after the church divided $160,000 among its 300 congregants, giving every church member or frequent attendee a $500 check and a request only that they use it for good.

Senior Pastor Laura Truax said her first thought after making the announcement Sept. 7 that congregants could pick up checks with their names on them after the service wasn’t an overwhelming sense of faith that the experiment would be successful.

An unexpected fortune

The plan came up as suddenly as the resources to fund it had appeared, Truax said. In June, the British Columbia-based Onni Group acquired Atrium Village, a 309-unit residential development funded by Security Properties Inc., Crane Construction Co. and four churches, including LaSalle Street Church.

The churches each owned 15 percent of the property and got $1.6 million apiece out of the $50 million buyout, Truax said. She and the church’s board of elders decided to use 10 percent of the money to engage the roughly 300-member church in a giving challenge.

“It’s really easy to give the money to charitable causes — you can do that without leaving your desk chair, you know,” Truax said of the reasoning behind letting individuals, instead of the organization, decide how to give.

“To really think critically about where the nexus of the world’s need and your gift might really be making a difference … has the potential to be an incredibly transformative experience.”

The remaining $1.4 million likely will be spent outside the church, she said.

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source: dnaifo.com

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